Badgers Basketball Fans Wonder About NCAA Tournament Invitation

The Wisconsin Badgers have played ten games to this point in the season and their play to this point comes with mixed reviews. Yes it's only ten games, but they are starting to develop a trend, and Bo Ryan's streak of consecutive NCAA Tournaments made may be in jeopardy if they don't break it. Among the various Badgers wins to this point, they beat teams like Southeastern Louisiana, Cornell, Presbyterian, and Arkansas. Two of the ranked teams they have played, Florida and Creighton, were losses. The Creighton game was close at halftime, but the Bluejays pulled away in the second half for a 10-point victory. The final score of the Florida was 74-56, and the game was never really close. They lost to Virginia, and then took care of business on December 2 and 4.  In those games, they trounced their opponents, but again, they were supposed to do that.

What I'm getting at here is that if they can't beat ranked teams Bo Ryan's streak of consecutive NCAA Tournaments made will come to an end this season. I understand it's early, and they will have plenty of chances, especially once they enter conference after New Year's, but I don't like what I see here. They can't just beat teams like Nebraska-Omaha and expect to make the Tournament.

As of this moment, they are not scheduled to play a ranked team again until January 12^th when they take on Illinois, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a little intrigue on the schedule before then. Next for the Badgers is their annual game againstMarquette on December 8^th and two weeks later they take on Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I don't know if you've noticed, but the Panthers have been making that game just a little more interesting in recent years. After that the Badgers will finish their pre-conference schedule at home against Sanford so there will be plenty of chances for fans to see the Badgers in person before they hit conference play.

           

Cornell Crushes Badgers

For 11 seconds, Wisconsin and Cornell were tied in Sunday’s game. Then Big Red forward Ryan Wittman hit a quick jumper, making it 2-0 in favor of Cornell.
That was just the beginning of the rout Sunday as No. 12 seed Cornell knocked off No. 4 seed Wisconsin 87-69 at Veterans Memorial Arena. The win was just the second NCAA victory in school history for Cornell, which will face the Kentucky Wildcats in the Sweet 16.
After Wittman hit the first shot of the game for Cornell, the Ivy League champions put on a shooting clinic over the final 39 minutes and 49 seconds.
“When you play a team that can shoot like they did, obviously 69 points just wasn’t good enough,” junior forward Jon Leuer said. “They were on fire.”
For the first half, Cornell shot 59.3 percent overall and 50 percent from the 3-point range. After halftime, the Big Red were even better, connecting on 63 percent of their attempts and 57.1 from long distance.
Wittman was particularly impressive, shooting 10-for-15 on the day and 3-of-5 beyond the arc. The senior from Eden Prairie, Minn., finished with 24 points, two assists and two steals.
Additionally, it was a game of milestones for Wittman, who broke his own school record for points in a season with 586 and became just the fifth player in Ivy League history to score 2,000 career points.

Hopefully it was a good learning experience for next year. GO BUCKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!